tibet

Tibet (3^rd- 8^th /01/2014)
Location: Autonomous region of Western China
Population: 3.03 million
Famed For: Called the ‘Roof of the World’ it is home to the world’s highest peak, Mt. Everest and is synonymous with Buddhism, yaks and altitude sickness.
 

'Teacher! Why do you go Tibet in January? It is so cold and high up. No! Do not be so happy! If you get excited you could die.'

 

                                                                                                                                  - Student Quote of the Week

Tibet, in January, is an intense sensory experience. 

 

A riot of colour after the smog grey tones of Chengdu, every shade here is sharper; crisply unambiguous against the shocking blue of the sky. The houses line the roads in glistening white, brick blocks. Primary coloured prayer flags snap back and forth in the wind.The pilgrims circle Jokhang Temple in rainbow coils, the women's long black skirts overlaid with multi-coloured, striped, woollen aprons trailing in the dust as they walk by. Monks in saffron robes vanish amongst the labyrinthine crimson and carnelian temple rooms. Every surface is painted in scarlet, gold and mustard yellow, cream and black, no space untouched by colour. Only the mountains are brown and bare of everything except for a covering of snow on the peaks. We are too early for the riot of wildflowers that carpet them every spring.

The air is choked with smoke and incense, even in the open places of the market squares. Inside the temples the effect is concentrated; Potala Palace, the ancient home of the Dalai Lama, cloisters and ferments within its warren of windowless rooms hundreds of years of perfume, smoke, incense and prayers.

It's noisy. The rasp of wood or paper against the street floor as someone prostrates themselves.The litany of prayer in a temple courtyard. The gabbling chants of beggar children tugging at elbows for money. The clap of hands as the novices argue religious philosophy in the debating grounds. An army truck backfiring in the street. A herd of goats crossing a mountain road. The latest Tibetan pop hit blasting from someone's car radio.

 

There is yak in everything. We drink yak butter tea, eat yak curry, yak with potatoes, yak soup, yak pie. Even the bread has yak in it- flat, oily baked circles with morsels of meat pressed into the dough. It's surprisingly good, though after a while the combination of altitude sickness and yak flavouring does not mix and leaves the group queasily staring at our free breakfast of yak noodles, wishing for plain toast or fruit.

 

X and E are hardest hit with a bout of sickness that comes and goes and then returns viciously on random days. L battles a stinking headache with copious amounts of Tiger Balm and I swallow my Chinese herbal tablets and am only sick the first day. We all struggle to sleep at night and toilet paper becomes as valuable as gold. G is the lucky one who is least affected by it all, but then, as the tallest in our group we joke that she's been used to a higher altitude than the rest of us for most of her life.

 

You can tell somewhere is worth visiting though when despite being ill you still find it absolutely breath-taking. And it is. Standing on the flat roof of a temple or the steps of the palace gazing out over Lhasa we really do feel like we're in another world. These are people who feel their religion intensely. Who live amongst spirits and demons and placate them with offerings. Who practice sky burials, giving their loved ones to the birds. Who are born and reborn and born again.

 

Here there is no Starbucks, no H&M, no creeping westernisation. No roadside services except for a bench over a communal hole erected inside a shed. No hand soap. No shiny commercialism. No tourists. No WiFi café's or hundreds of TV channels. It's a refreshing change after China and the brief respite from the sound of spitting is welcome too.

 

But China is still stamped all over Tibet, an unwelcome mark that mars its beauty. Chinese flags fly from the buildings. Chinese police watch the crowds from the rooftops under shaded awnings. The roads are littered with checkpoints where journeys are recorded and time stamped- go too fast or too slowly and you're fined at the next checkpoint. Tibetan jobs are filled by resettled Han Chinese. Pictures of the Dalai Lama hang in restaurants and temples, but the man himself is an exile. As for the real Panchen Lama, no-one knows where he is. And most tellingly, no-one will talk about it. Our guide, a lovely man who hopes his third son will become a monk, will only talk about the Friendship Highway, which the Chinese built, cutting a swathe through the sweeping mountains in shiny black tarmac. It isn't safe for him to talk about anything more than that.

 

We talk about other things instead.

 

The beauty of Lake Yamdrok. The queues of pilgrims we see waiting to enter Sera Monastery. How the sound of the curved horn blown by a monk on the roof of Tashi Lumpo Monastery sounds like no noise we have ever heard before. Why the sweets we picked up in Lhasa are the taste equivalent of a confectionary Russian roulette. Why everyone thinks it's arctic in January in Tibet when you can walk around without a coat if you want. Why walking up a flight of stairs at altitude leaves you feeling like you've climbed Chomolungma. How I had my photograph taken at Potala and didn't notice the little girl doing a poo in the background.

 

And then it's over. 

 

Our few days in Tibet end and we have to say goodbye. I go back to Chengdu before flying to Beijing to meet my parents and Grandad, whilst the others go in different directions to varying different countries. I hate goodbyes and saying goodbye to G is odd after over five months of living and working together. She's off touring the world and won't be home until summer but there's talk of a group reunion and with email and Facebook, these days you're never too far away from your friends, new or old.  

 

Meanwhile, Chengdu is still as cold and damp as when I left. The people still drive on the pavements, and I still have to dodge globs of spit but the girls behind the desk at Traffic Inn are waiting for me like long lost family.

 

'Rachel! How was Tibet? Was it cold?'

 

'Beautiful. Warm. Amazing,' I reply and hand over my passport to check in.

 

They give me back a potato.

 

'You look tired', says June by way of explanation.

 

I shrug and accept. This is China after all. Things don't have to make sense.

 

At least it's not a yak.

 

a chinese christmas

(25th-31st/12/2013)
Location: Chengdu

'Rachel, when I first see you I think you are so tall and white'

                                                                                                                                                                -Student quote of the week

 

For me, Christmas mornings always begin the same way.



I’m woken by the sound of the electric whisk as Mum whips up the latest batch of sugar glazed cakes and soft, crumbly pastries in the kitchen. The house is warm and smells of baking and cinnamon candles. Michael Bublé croons softly in the background downstairs. I treat myself to another hour dozing in bed before turning the radio on as I get ready, and Bublé has to do battle with whatever Christmas classic blasts from my room. 

The first Christmas I can remember- I'm three years old.

We have croque monsieur croissants hot from the oven and glasses of Buck’s Fizz. Someone puts Carols from King’s on the TV. My grandparents arrive and my sister and I open our presents from Father Christmas (who has been cunningly tricked into giving us gifts each year even though we’re far past the age of believing.) Lunch appears with great ceremony around 1ish, and everyone gets to open one present at the table before tackling the mounds of food plattered up in front of us. There are crackers and paper hats and charades, family presents to open, the Queen’s speech and the other Christmas TV staples to watch - Doctor Who, (for the youngsters), Strictly Come Dancing, (for my parents) and the usual cheery melodrama of death and destruction offered up by Coronation Street and Emmerdale (for my Nan). Someone normally brings out the board games or the Wii and there ensures a battle of wits, cheats and sore losers, only broken up by the arrival of more food at teatime.

 

And then everything is tidied away, dishes washed, presents carried upstairs, only for the whole thing to be gloriously repeated the following day.

 

The only graffiti I saw in China

Except this year on Christmas morning I am faced with teaching my last classes of the year. Instead of the sounds of festive domesticity I’m woken by the sound of the school bell and the workmen loudly extending the university buildings outside my apartment block. The tiled floor is cold, the shower refuses to provide hot water and for breakfast I have instant chocolate and an apple.

Most of G’s class didn’t turn up yesterday so she cancelled her lesson and came back early. Quietly, I’m hoping mine have the same idea so I can celebrate the holiday with an extra few hours in bed. But where G’s students don’t turn up, I not only end up with four full classes, I have some students in my lessons who I haven’t even seen all semester. Still, I’m determined to enjoy my Christmas day even if I’m spending it far from home. We play Christmas music, charades and blindfolded Pictionary. I discover some of my students have never seen real snow and as a consequence they're slightly baffled by my enthusiasm for snowmen and snowball fights. The closest they’ve got is an upstairs window of the local supermarket, which has been pumping out flakes of white foam into the sky since yesterday afternoon. No-one is quite sure if this is deliberate or if there's just an unstoppable washing machine running rampant up there.

We play the tensest game of Pass the Parcel I have ever witnessed (mostly because there are no prizes only forfeits) and the students put on their productions of The Snowman, which they’ve been assigned as homework. They've made up their own dialogue; brought their own props and some of them even sing and dance.

Sweetly, some of my students have even clubbed together to buy me presents, which I’m very touched by. I also get a small mountain of apples, which is what the Chinese give each other on Christmas Day, along with some rather sweet, hand-drawn cards and chocolate (my students know me so well). The English society have also produced an A4 notebook each for G and I, which has been filled with letters from many of the students, some of whom have never actually had the courage to come and speak to us in person.

The notes range from the sweet: ‘We will miss you.’

To the funny: ‘Rachel, my English is no good so I have drawn picture of you as rabbit instead.’


For some reason
Father Christmas is always depicted
 playing the Saxophone in China.


And then there are the few that are inadvertently creepy: ‘Rachel, I am the boy who watches you in the office. Hi!'
 
Some of my students haven't actually twigged that I won't be coming back next semester and the end of each class concludes with a round of picture taking and hugs, swapped email addresses and phone numbers. This is much less emotionally draining than the Kindergarten, where at the end of the lesson I have a dozen or so children clinging to my legs and waist as I try and wade through them to the door. It's fairly impossible though when you have a group of wobbly lipped, sad eyed four year olds asking very loudly in Chinese for you not to go. Eventually, though, my teaching assistant comes and prises them off me so I can leave and I have to shoo them back into the classroom when they try and follow me out of the door.

The rest of Christmas day is lovely even if it's a bit different. When I get back to the flat G has created a mini Christmas picnic and has Carols from King's playing on the laptop. There are truffles and fizz and lots of foods which are bad for you but completely appropriate on Christmas Day. We have tinsel up and cards and I phone home and manage to speak to everyone just as they tuck into lunch. We even manage to find a Christmas dinner of our own at a restaurant in Chengdu, which does resemble and taste like a traditional lunch, even if it's not a patch on a home cooked one. Still, it's much better than rice and cabbage, which is what's being served at the university canteen. 

 

And then that’s it. Christmas Day comes and goes and suddenly we’re done. We input the scores for the students’ exams. Tidy up the apartment. Pack our bags. Catch the early coach from campus into Chengdu. Our teaching is finished and there’s no fanfare or acknowledgment from the university that we’ve completed our semester, except for a quick goodbye from Beata and some of the other teachers who nod and wave and wish us the best. It’s all very low key and slightly surreal.

Suddenly we’ve finished. I’ll miss the students (most of them) but not the lesson plans and early mornings, cold apartment or strange wasp creatures (that have now gone into hibernation and will appear as a nice surprise for the next teachers to live there).

We’re finished and that’s ok, because here comes the beginning of travelling proper. Like experiencing Christmas in China for the first time, there will be things new, and old and familiar and wonderful and strange.

A new adventure is about to start.

I can’t wait.

 



the nursery rhyme repetition

(15th-22nd/11/2013)
Loudai Ancient Town, Huanglongxi and Chongqing
Location: L and H both a 45 minute bus ride from Chengdu, Chongqing is a two hour train ride away.
Famed For: Being pretty, laid back river towns, Chongqing is Chengdu's sister town.             

'Laoshi, Rachel! Laoshi, Rachel! E-I-E-I-O!'

                                                                                                                                       -Student quote of the week

 

 

'Old Macdonald Had A Farm' is perhaps one of the most well-known children's nursery rhymes ever created. It is also now the theme song of my kindergarten tots, who have latched onto its simple repeating chorus with a tenacity that has surprised everyone, including me. Teaching farmyard animals for a couple of weeks and having shown them the song (complete with video) I have only myself to blame for their obsession.

 

I have, quite simply, created a monster. 

E-I-E-I-O (the only words they truly understand) is sung with gusto at every opportunity. Any new song that is introduced is mistaken for their favourite classic and though I teach them different words, some of the children resist and fit E-I-E-I-O into every nursery tune we sing. They begin it spontaneously every time I come through the class room door. Sometimes I even wake up humming it.

 

One lesson I decide we have sung it enough and so I teach them 'One Finger, One Thumb' and the 'Hokey Cokey.' They love it. But the look of disappointment on their faces as I pack up my things at the end of the lesson and they realise we are not singing their farm song is heart breaking. One little girl bursts into tears. I cave in and next week we sing it. Twice.

 

Yes, they have me wrapped around their tiny fingers.

 

In other teaching news, I end up being the only teacher to turn up to English Corner this week. As it's not a requirement that G and I go, we only appear occasionally as you end up fielding the same questions (Where are you from? Why are you here? Do you like China? ) for over an hour.

 

Of course the week I decide to make an appearance, I discover that the students are expecting a lecture on exam practice, Joshua has gone home and Gregory and Mark are stuck in Chengdu and won’t make it back in time. I am now left with over ninety students, an hour to fill and no plan. Applause begins inside the classroom as I am announced and I have no choice but to go in. This feels like the beginning of a nightmare but unfortunately it is very, very real. Which underscores the lesson I learn this week of always, always having a backup plan.

 

Or an escape route.

 

Needless to say, my improvisational skills have a sudden and very steep learning curve and it's amazing how long sixty minutes can last when you have no idea what you are doing.

 

To add to my distress, this week I discover that the canteen is feeding us spicy congealed pig blood and not spicy dark brown tofu, which is what I’d thought (hoped) it was. It joins the chicken heart as dishes that are Not Good.

 

The recent weekends on the other hand have been mostly stress free. We go to Ciqikou porcelain village in Chengdu’s sister city of Chongqing. It’s a beautiful warren of streets and shops, selling everything from fluffy, golden egg custard tarts, to hand drawn fairytale style pictures of China, carved wooden hairpins to Chairman Mao busts. It has signs pointing you in the direction of temples and ice bars, aquariums and the intriguingly named statue of ‘Young Married Woman and Little Peeing Boy’. We even get upgraded at our hostel for being late and are given a double room with en-suite instead of the six bed dorm we’d booked.

 

We visit Huanglongxi, a small peaceful place with a bubbling creek slicing through the town centre before flowing into the basin of the river. There are waterwheels and stepping stones carved like giant turtles and a huge humped stone dragon emerging from the water to guard the town. An enormous fountain sprays water up over a fat lipped bowl in the main square, restaurants and tourist kiosks ring the centre, and it’s a pleasant place to sit and eat lunch and watch the world go by, except K decides that now is an appropriate time to attempt to choke to death on pork leg.

 

G and I take the opportunity to debate whether she is actually choking or just having a violent coughing fit, the various merits of offering K water, tissues and a slap on the back, and the unfortunate fact that out of the three of us the only one who actually knows First Aid is K. Surprisingly, K recovers without our help, revealing she’d caught a tiny bone in her throat. Of course the only remedy for almost dying is snacks, shopping and sweet fruit flower tea. Fortunately, China has all three of these is abundance and the tea even comes with a trio of very persistent old ladies attempting to give us a massage that we don’t want.

 

Finally we visit Loudai, the home of the Hakka people, where we are shown round for free by a student from the nearby tourism college. He takes us to the local museum which reliably informs us that ‘Hakka women are brave, strong and resilient […] and the men are imaginary.’  We visit a local Hakka woman making shoes, the meeting houses of the Council, eat ice-cream, buy more souvenirs than is probably healthy and get sung to by a group of teenage girls who seemingly appear from nowhere and sweetly demand that we listen to them serenade us.

 

We have no idea what they are singing, but it's keeping them happy so we just smile and nod along and let them get on with it.

 

At least it's not Old Macdonald Had A Farm.

a birthday abroad

(1st/12/2013)
Sichuan Face Changing Opera Theatre
Location: Chengdu
Famed For: Split second timing, incomprehensible plot lines and fire breathing actors.

'My hair is my father'

                                                                                                                                  -Student quote of the week

It's always an invitation to be wary when one of the Chinese staff members sits down at your table in the teacher's canteen. The inevitability of an inquisition, the curious raised eyebrow at the minimal amount of meat on my lunch tray, the request for tuition during preciously hoarded weekends all tend to make meal times a careful negotiation between avoiding indigestion and leaving as quickly as possible.

 

I pretend to study the tea boiled cabbage on my plate, before moving on to attempting to identify what the latest gelatinous white blob is wobbling beside it, all whilst eyeing my colleague suspiciously from under my fringe. She smiles in my direction and slurps her noodles before launching into an innocuous, largely one sided conversation about why I have come to China and what kind of teaching I am doing. Slowly, almost inexorably, I am dragged into the conversation and before I can politely extricate myself she has my telephone number, teaching schedule and has somehow contrived a meeting between myself and her friend who wishes to learn English.

 

Fortunately, Ruby turns out to be a lovely student.

With the help of one of my university students, L, who has voluntarily agreed to act as translator/dictionary, Ruby tells me she owns her own restaurant and wants to learn English so she can go to a business conference next year. Just approaching middle age, with laughing, intelligent eyes, she allows me to drink as many chocolate milk teas as I want for the two hours I teach her. I revel in the heating that is sadly missing from my own apartment where I can now see my own breath. She notes down everything I say in a large black book, is eager to learn, assigns herself homework and finds English hysterical. The phrase 'been on my feet all day' sends her into a fit of laughter that brings tears to her eyes.

 

Touchingly, for my birthday she even makes me a cake, complete with candles. A dinner plate sized confection of cream and vanilla sponge, as guest of honour I am served a wedge that could keep a door open, complete with tiny cake spork. It is delicious- light, airy and creamy. Then I discover three tiny, random chunks of pineapple in my slice. No-one else around the table is questioning why a traditional sponge cake has small pieces of tropical fruit inside it, though a significant nod at the cake and then at G prompts an expression of knowing commiseration.

I am, however, used to Ruby serving me odd food combinations. During that first meeting she had offered L and I a chance to try the house pizza to ensure it tasted like it would in England. As we were doing her a favour simply by eating free food we readily agreed. After fifteen minutes the pizza arrived and though the topping looked unfamiliar I gamely nibbled a slice. 

 

'Is it good, like pizza in your England?' Ruby questioned anxiously.

 

'It's a little different,' I confirmed, smiling between slightly clenched teeth.

Out of politeness I managed to swallow a second piece before claiming to be full. I had to wait another hour before I could leave and brush my teeth to get rid of the taste of tomato sauce, cheese, onion, garlic, pulped cherry and banana.

 

One of my favourite students, Angela, has her birthday the day following mine and as she and some of my other students sit around the Caribbean inspired sponge cake with me and G in Ruby's restaurant they explain the rules of candle blowing in China. You have three wishes. The first two are said out loud and the last is kept secret. I explain that in England when you make a wish and blow the candles out you don't say what it is because then it won't come true. So Angela and I compromise and make two wishes. One out loud and one to ourselves.

 

This birthday is my first in a foreign country but a package containing my birthday cards has safely arrived and so has a parcel from home full of necessities- a hot water bottle, fleecy pyjamas, a jumper, emergency chocolate and the obligatory socks. It's different to what I'd normally get on my birthday, but after sleeping in my hat, gloves, scarf and coat last night, the chance to finally be warm in the apartment makes them gratefully received.

 

As to actually celebrating, on the Saturday evening (before a night of KTV and dancing) my friends and I go to see the Face Changing Opera. It's the second show I've seen in China- the first being an acrobat show in Beijing, where all of the performers were sixteen or under, their parents too poor to support them and so there they were earning money to send back to their families. Girls span plates on sticks, five clutched in each hand whilst doing forward rolls and twisting their bodies into impossible poses, walking on each others shoulders and then standing on the heads of their partners. One girl threw paper parasols with her feet, balancing them with her toes and flipping them over, teenage boys barrelled through tiny hoops, another balanced on one hand on a stack of nine chairs.

 

The face changing, however, is very different. There is a woman who appears between each act to explain what will follow and electronic boards either side of the stage translating what is happening into chinglish. The plot is still largely baffling though. This makes it no less interesting or strange but it truly demonstrates just how far down the rabbit hole we have fallen. There are people in amazing battle costumes and faces painted in a range of brilliant colours, singing up and down several octaves. Women dance, billowing sleeves swirling around them in a riot of colour. A clown appears and pretends to tip water onto the audience. There are several scenes of ancient life in Chengdu, two lovers are separated- the man is scarred by a rival and forced to wear a Phantom of the Opera style mask. A puppeteer appears with a doll that can dance and has fingers that can be individually manipulated to grasp at flowers, feathers and floating scarves. A man spews fire into the air. Two dancers on wires soar through the auditorium. The face changers appear, skin thin masks disappearing from their faces in the blink of an eye without the touch of human hands. One second they wear one face. The next a completely different one. There are at least a dozen masks worn underneath each other and it's intriguing to wonder just how they remove them without touching their faces. Is it the twitch of a facial muscle? A special compartment fitted into their hats? They come down into the audience to shake people's hands- and even as they are shaking hands their masks disappear into their costumes until their faces are revealed. It's impossible to say how it's done and deeply impressive.

 

Then to everyone's astonishment the masks begin to reappear as if shuttered by invisible fingers.

 

The evening finishes with the reappearance of the puppet that now breathes fire and we are left with a deep sense of amazement (largely at how a wooden fire-breathing puppet does not catch alight) and wonder at what we have witnessed.

 

This is swiftly punctured by the lights coming up and a voice speaking over the tannoy:

 

'Dear audience, the show has ended. Please leave the theatre. Thank you.'

 

In England, the end of a show would be marked by rousing music, the fall of the curtain and a round of applause. In China, the audience have largely already left before the end and there is no-one left to clap except the tourists.

 

We applaud loudly to make up for this and there are a couple of whoops and cheers from along our row. The actors look startled at all this enthusiasm, as though they're not sure why they're being praised and I recognise the expression of polite suspicion on their faces.

 

It's the one I wear every time Ruby presents me with food.

 

Out of the theatre we head towards Helen's Bar for post theatre drinks. As birthday girl I have mine bought for me and then a plate arrives and is placed on the table before me. What's this?

 

A has bought me cake. Chocolate cheesecake by the look of it, but that's no guarantee of anything.

 

'Make a wish!' she says brightly.

 

I close my eyes and silently ask for no pineapple.

bamboo and bonfires

(9th-10th/11/2013)
Yibin Bamboo Sea, Sichuan Province
Location: 330km from Chengdu, a six hour bus journey.
Famed For: Being one of the locations for the filming of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

'On Bonfire Night we should remember not to set fire to people'

                                                                                                                                                                  -Student quote of the week

Remember, remember, the fifth of November. Gunpowder, treason and teaching.

Bonfire night is a complicated lesson to give and makes me homesick for funfair food and muddy fields, cold feet clad in wellies, the flash of fireworks, and the smell of bonfires. It's always been a festival I've particularly enjoyed- a gory history lesson and an opportunity to set stuff on fire in the name of tradition. To be so far away from home is a little galling, but instead I channel all of my enthusiasm for this most British of celebrations into my lesson.I retell the story and show my students a clip of an experiment demonstrating what would have happened had Guy Fawkes been successful in blowing up the Houses of Parliament. Cue impressive explosion. I also show them a gory firework safety video, inducing shock, disgust and a lot of wincing from the students. I get them to list as many firework safety tips as possible, leading to some rather brilliant quotes from my students:  

 

Student a: Don't light bonfires indoors.

Student b: Don't light bonfires near gas stations.

Student c: Don't set fire to your clothes or other people's clothes.
Student d: Don't put fireworks in people. This may cause a mess.

As an experiment I also get them to be defence lawyers for Guy Fawkes. I list points on the board for them to use in their speech if they wish to but encourage them to come up with their own ideas. Of course, most of them then slavishly follow my bullet notes until my last student, Sue, who stands up and declares:

 

'I am the defence lawyer for Guy Fawkes. He is innocent. He was not trying to blow up King James, he just wanted to show him a new kind of firework.'

 

Historically accurate it may not be, but I have to give her points for creativity.

I spend my weekend as far from fireworks and the heat of bonfires as possible- being mostly damp at Yibin Bamboo sea.

It's something out of a half forgotten fairytale. The bamboo forest is dark and dense, mist filled and endless. We pass rock with deep grooves slashed into the stone as though carved by the claws of a giant bear. Statues emerge from amongst the foliage, stone figures frozen in time, toads in the river waiting for a kiss. There are great waterfalls that pour over cliffs and disappear into the bamboo below, temple fortresses cut into the sides of cliffs, labyrinthine tunnels, steep, winding paths clinging to the face of the mountain, and the occasional group of monks, clustered around an altar, praying, their thin maroon robes fluttering in the wind.

 

And hidden somewhere in amongst all of that greenery are wild pandas.

 

The Bamboo Sea, however, is also home to a rather large mosquito population and the world's most boring museum, the Bamboo Museum. Whilst it is impressive to see just how many different things you can make out of bamboo (furniture, vehicles, weaponry, paper and even clothing to name but a few), after a while there's only so many bamboo artefacts you can look at before it all becomes so much vegetation in varying shapes. It's the foliage equivalent of going to a balloon animal museum (which would probably be more fun). It's saving grace is that it's free. (And no, we did not choose to go there, we hired a car and driver for the weekend who took us on the standard tour route. Who knows how many others have suffered before us?)

 

 

The Bamboo Sea is also a rather humid place, giving me Monica in Barbados hair, and the guest house we stop at unpleasantly wet beds. K, however, discovers electric blankets and instead of being cold and damp at night we are now warm and damp, as though we are sleeping in a slightly moist armpit. The guest house also has a bathroom that clearly took it's design construct from the corridor in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory that gets narrower and lower the further in you go. As a consequence we have to become bent double to get to the toilet at the far end of the room. On the upside, the food is good and we feast on a meal of rice, shredded potato and ginger, beef strips and, unsurprisingly, bamboo.

The Bamboo Sea's claim to fame is that not only is it stunning, it was one of the shooting locations for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Eager to set out and explore we start early the next day; in fact so early that our driver is still asleep and has to be hunted down and woken up by our guest house owner, Joan, (who turns out to be the driver's aunt, or cousin, or his sister, we never quite understand) and when we arrive at the first cable car to take us up into the park it isn't even open.

 

After a half hour wait the cable car centre finally opens and we buy our tickets and walk through the deserted hanger to queue up for the cars, which turn out to be tiny, two seater boxes, made in the seventies and not updated since. They creak ominously and have no glass in the front windows. Or safety bars. Lean out too far and you could meet a very long drop very quickly into the forest below. Or at least what we presume to be a forest. We can only see the tops of the trees and the car in front because the mist is thick. Very thick. It's like going through cloud soup. Still, it makes it atmospheric if nothing else. You could make a good fantasy film here. Or a horror.

 

The cars, surprisingly, make it to the other side. Here there is more mist and more bamboo. In the search for the right path we almost walk into a bunch of Chinese tourists who appear out of the mist and then disappear again just as quickly. We head off after them in what we think is the right direction and find another cable car. This one, however, is much more modern, able to hold our group of seven and a Japanese family of five as well as the cable car operator comfortably. There is a recorded message playing in Chinese over the speakers in the car, telling us, we can only presume, about the spectacular views we are seeing as we cross over the sea of bamboo. The amazing vistas, the number of miles the bamboo stretches out for, the historical significance of the area. Instead, all we can see is a sea of white nothingness as though everything outside of the car has been erased.

 

It isn't until midday that the mist eventually clears enough for us to see what all the fuss is about. The view is spectacular. An endless stretch of undulating green as far as the eye can see, a mountain rising up to the north, terraced paddy fields to the west, a valley of waving trees to the south. Water criss-crossing the landscape in silvery veins. The air is crisp and fresh and cold.

 

Towering behind us is a sheer cliff face and we make our way up the snaking pathways and through the rock itself. We cross over a little lake manned by a tiny Chinese woman who ferries us over on a raft of bamboo. We walk down four waterfalls and slog our way back up again. We eat more bamboo. I get bitten. We don bright orange life vests and grab a bamboo paddle to man a raft and boat our way around a rather bleak looking lake. We almost lose our driver. We nearly forget one of our party, W, who goes to buy a drink as we all clamber into the taxis and it isn't until we've gone half way down the road that we realise we're one short. We take endless pictures and sweat our way up and down muddy paths and thoroughly exhaust ourselves, eventually making it back to the coach for the six hour journey back to Chengdu.

 

 

And when my students ask me what I did at the weekend, I tell them I went out for some fresh air.

little monsters

(2nd-3rd/11/2013)

Location: Chengdu, Sichuan Province

 

'Things you see at Halloween? Monster, vampire, ghost...sexy nurse!'

                                                                                                                              -Student quote of the week

It's dark and stormy outside, with a cold breeze and a slate grey sky that promises rain. I've forgotten my coat, my phone battery is about to die and I'm in an aboveground tomb.

 

It can only be Halloween.

 

At the university it's been another interesting week of teaching. My second years, (having already covered Halloween in their first year) think they know everything and are in a silly mood. The lesson begins to slip from my fingers so I switch tactics and turn off the lights.

 

Several scary film trailers later, they're still young and innocent enough to be cowering in their seats, hands splayed over their faces, peering nervously through their fingers as ghosts, monsters and possessed victims appear and disappear off screen. I flick the lights back on and grin at my students, who stare back at me, cowed and unsure what I'm going to subject them to next.

 

Back in control, we watch and discuss Michael Jackson's Thriller. I split them into groups and get them to pretend to be news reporters investigating paranormal sightings at the University, interviewing students. The acting and conviction varies from group to group, but my last class perform spectacularly well- one group of six even re-enacting the abduction and consumption of a student by a monster. It's hilarious and just a tad gruesome, which means the students find it great fun- especially the boys who sometimes have difficulty focussing in lessons.

 

Halloween also means the start of my dealings with a new set of little monsters- my classes at Enoch International Kindergarten begin this week. I go prepared for a lesson on colours, big, bright pieces of multicoloured card clutched under my arms for the kids to jump on, handmade flashcards in my bag...and walk into the kindergarten to find forty under five year olds dancing along to Gangnam Style.  
 
Apparently they're rehearsing for a Halloween party.

 

My lesson on colours promptly cancelled, I instead get to lend a hand doing the actions to Incy-Wincy Spider and If You're Happy and You Know It. I throw balled up pieces of newspaper at Styrofoam skeletons and fill my pockets full of sweets ready to give to the children that evening. The parents turn up promptly at five thirty and watch their offspring strut down a makeshift catwalk in their Halloween costumes. There are robots and witches, wolves, monsters and princesses. One little boy is dressed as a duck. Words fail to express how adorable he looks.

 

The children perform their dances, destroy the skeletons and finish the evening by going on a treasure hunt in the play-area, before politely asking their teachers for sweets as they have been taught.

 

'Teacher! Give me candy!'

The weekend arrives unexpectedly quickly. The weather becomes grim and my plan to escape Chengdu is hastily shelved, the prospect of an hour's bus journey to a deserted ancient town damp with rain and choked with mud, an uninviting one. Instead I stay and see some of the things I haven't managed to get around to.

I go back to Jinli Street at night, the pathways lit up prettily with thin, red paper lanterns. I visit Big and Small Alley, two long streets full of expensive, interesting shops and restaurants, where you can buy a hot chocolate and watch victims have the wax removed from their ears by experts wearing headlamps and wielding tools that once belonged to Edward Scissorhands.

I visit People's Park and watch the dozens of people rowing their boats on the lake in circles, trying to avoid each other. It's rather like watching several sharks swim around your bathtub- there's not enough room and someone's going to get hurt but you can't look away. As I'm watching from my quiet, lakeside bench, three cleaners appear from the corner of my eye and decide now is the perfect opportunity to clean the area around my bench. Only my bench. No-one elses. Two more appear from the trees behind. A sixth slowly circles in from the front. I'm reminded uncomfortably of Thriller and make a quick exit.

 

And now I'm in a tomb. Technically it's the only aboveground tomb to be excavated in China and it belongs to Wangjian, the Emperor of Former Shu in Five Dynasties (847-918 AD). Like most tombs it was robbed of its treasures over time, and now only the stone coffin remains with twelve warriors on each side bracing it on their shoulders. Along the sides of the coffin are twenty four people playing musical instruments and at the end of the tomb is a statue of the man himself, seated in a chair and residing over his own half shadowed resting place for all eternity.

 

I'm not sure what creeps me out more- the poorly lit tomb with it's shadows and stone faces or the man I saw earlier having six inch needles thrust down his ears to remove the wax.

 

I end my weekend by meeting my friends for hotpot at a new restaurant near the Tibetan quarter. Successfully navigating the menu via the only English speaking waitress in the establishment we wait and watch as the bowls of spicy oil are brought to the table and gently heated. The liquid bubbles. And then from the depths of the bowl comes a dead fish. A whole fish with eyes and scales and there it is, floating around belly up in the bubbling sauce. One of my friends, R, announces she will be sick.

 

There is a quick conference around the table. The fish cannot be left in the bowl and so the poor dead creature is hastily scooped out. Now there is a new dilemma. There are no bowls or plates or dishes on the table. Nothing to put the fish on. Our only option is to squash it into the only free receptacle on the table... the napkin holder.

 

The fish stares at us with an expression I can only describe as depressed.

 

'Fú wù yuán,' I beckon the waitress over and present her with the dead fish awkwardly wedged in the napkin tray. 'Búyào. We don't want this.'

 

She looks at the dead fish I am presenting her with and then at our group. We repeat ourselves and make removing motions. Both the waitress and the fish look unimpressed.

 

Another waitress joins her and together they look at the fish squeezed clumsily into the napkin dispenser. There is a brief flurry of Chinese and eventually the waitress sighs, nods and carries it away.

 

We turn back to the still bubbling bowl. No-one volunteers to stir it again. Gingerly G pokes a long handled spoon into the bowl to check nothing else will float up at us.

 

It's Halloween and it's China.

 

Anything could be in there.